


Been So Long

by ClaraxBarton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Stucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 20:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18645550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: We save the ones we can, Steve had once told Wanda.Most of the time, that was… enough for Steve. Reminding himself that he could and did save those that he could. Reminding himself that loss was part of the human equation.But on the days when the suit felt too tight and the shield too heavy, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to keep him warm or to keep him from longing for the world he had been born into, the mother he had lost, the father he had never known. The men and women he had loved and left behind.





	Been So Long

There were times - hours, days, hell  _ weeks _ when it was too much. When the shield felt too heavy. When the suit felt too tight. When Steve felt trapped and suffocating and buried alive under the ice all over again. 

 

He had told Sam about it once, after a mission, the two of them exhausted and collapsed in the bay of the Quinjet as Natasha piloted them home.

 

“I miss it. I miss  _ them _ , Sam,” Steve confessed. It was probably the blood loss talking - super soldier healing meant the deep laceration across his ribs didn’t need more than a thorough cleaning - provided by Natasha before liftoff - but healing quickly didn’t negate pain, or nausea, or anything else that accompanied fighting and almost dying.

 

Sam, battered and bruised but safe, ripped open a protein bar and nodded in agreement.

 

“Me too,” Sam offered with a sad, wry smile. “Days like today… I think about all the guys I’ll never see again.”

 

Steve felt his throat constrict, felt a flood of emotions and words surge within him, a universe of impossibilities for him. For Sam. For all the guys they would never see again. 

 

He could Avenge all he wanted - or didn’t want - but that wouldn’t bring back anyone he or anyone else had lost.

 

_ We save the ones we can _ , Steve had once told Wanda. 

 

Most of the time, that was… enough for Steve. Reminding himself that he could and did save those that he could. Reminding himself that loss was part of the human equation.

 

But on the days when the suit felt too tight and the shield too heavy, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to keep him warm or to keep him from longing for the world he had been born into, the mother he had lost, the father he had never known. The men and women he had loved and left behind. 

 

On those days he thought about Peggy, the fierce girl he had promised to dance with, the girl he had dreamed, for the first - the only time - of making a life with. The girl who had become a woman with a rich, full life and a legacy for her children and the world. The woman who had died not remembering who Steve was. 

 

On those days he thought about Bucky, about the cocky, charming boy who always had Steve’s back until Steve hadn’t had his. Until Bucky fell and a lifetime of torture later, the Winter Soldier fought his way free. 

 

The two great loves of Steve’s life, lost to time, lost to the forces of the world, the only people in the world who remembered Steve as the scrawny, big mouthed guy who couldn’t back down from a fight. The only two people who had loved him then.

 

Those were the days when Steve wished he could forget, wished he could go back, wished for that dance he and Peggy had never had, that last chance to kiss Bucky Barnes, the golden boy of Brooklyn.

 

And on those days, Steve was slow to set down the shield, to take off the uniform. He was afraid, maybe, that it would be the last time - that he wouldn’t be able to pick it up or put it back on again, not with the weight of one hundred years on his shoulders. So he took his time with the straps and buckles, the zippers and snaps. And then he scrubbed his body as if he could wash away the past, wash away his sadness and desire. He scrubbed and scrubbed and sometimes he broke the skin. It didn’t matter. Minutes later he was pink and whole and new. As if it had never happened at all.

 

He dressed slowly, feeling his age. The clothes of the future. Denim pants that hugged his legs. Cotton T-shirts that were softer than clouds, never fit quite right. A leather jacket that was dark and supple and warm and almost,  _ almost _ smelled like the leather jacket Peggy had worn, the gun oil Bucky had used to clean his Springfield rifle.

 

It felt wrong, sometimes, to walk among civilians when he had all of this inside - as though his clothes were an ill fitting disguise for the broken man wearing them. He took the subway, and he pulled his hat low and he stared at the scuffed floor beneath his feet and he prayed no one would recognize him. When they did - and they always did - he summoned a wan smile from the brittle pit of despair in his gut and posed for a photograph or signed something and managed a few words of half-hearted inspiration.

 

Transfers and delays and awkward encounters and it all - it all felt like a lifetime itself, from the time Steve took off the uniform to the moment when he climbed the last stair and saw the slightly crooked 65 on the paint chipped door. 

 

The  _ penthouse _ , the super had called it with a sarcastic little cackle. Though, really, he hadn’t been wrong. The building was six floors, but there was another floor - definitely one the building wasn’t zoned for - that was maybe more of a half floor, with an apartment that straddled the space above the stairwell and elevator shaft and seemed forgotten by time and the city and - and felt like home in a way nothing else in this millenium ever had.

 

Steve rested his forehead on the door for a moment, let himself breathe, let himself just be, let the burden settle between his shoulders.

 

Eventually, he opened the door.

 

-o-

 

The afternoon light set the curtains aglow, bathed the polished wooden floor with golden light and and radiated warmth and comfort.

 

Steve felt that same choking curl of words and emotions, but he forced himself to breathe.

 

He took off his shoes, hung up his jacket, set down his keys and wallet and phone. He locked the door. He sat down on the well-worn couch and picked up the sketch book he had abandoned when the Assemble call came in two days ago.

 

And he drew.

 

It was one of those days, so he drew the faces he was afraid to forget. The eyes that wrinkled with a warm smile for him, the lips that curved with a laugh, the hands that held him steady.

 

Steve lost time, drawing all of the things he would never have, until it grew too dark to see the lines he made on the page before him. 

 

And he stared. At the shadowed past, the haunted dreams, and he wondered what the point of it all was, wondered why -

 

The front door opened.

 

Keys jangled. Fabric rustled. Boots dropped to the floor. Paper crinkled. Light flickered on.

 

Steve blinked against the bright flood and had to close his eyes. He had been in the dark for too long.

 

“Babe?”

 

Breathe, Steve reminded himself. Breathe. That’s all he had to do. 

 

Just breathe.

 

There was suddenly weight and heat at his side, solid and true and familiar and Steve sank into it. Fell, really, toppling over until his face was pressed to rough-soft jeans and he didn’t have to fight to keep the light away.

 

“Steve, baby. Stevie.”

 

Fingers were in his hair, gentle, firm, confident.

 

Steve wasn’t alone. 

 

“Baby, I’m here. I’ve got you.”

 

He drew in a ragged breathe, shuddered and released it and forced himself to turn, forced his eyes open, and looked up into the gaze he knew better than his own.

 

“I’m with you, Stevie. I’m with you.”

 

They had lost a lifetime, had lost so much, had lost  _ everything _ . But they were here. They were together.

 

Smooth, metal fingers traced over Steve’s cheek and jaw and it wasn’t until that moment that Steve realized his face was wet. Realized he was crying.

 

“Til the end of the line, sweetheart. You and me.”

 

It wasn’t the same, they weren’t the same. Bucky had left Steve in Brooklyn eighty years ago when Steve had barely been able to claim he was five feet six inches tall. Steve had left Bucky to freeze in the Alps when Bucky had chosen to follow Steve back into hell. Bucky had left Steve alone and aching in a hospital bed when Steve thought he finally had him back. Steve had left Bucky in ice in Wakanda when Steve thought nothing would ever be right again. 

 

But then one day Bucky had been there again, had let Steve touch his lips to make sure he was real and then pulled Steve into a kiss that they should have had back in 1945 and 1946 and 1947 and every year they had lost together.

 

And now Bucky was here. Was still here.

 

And on those days when everything felt like it was too much and not enough at the same time, it was enough. 

 

To put his head in Bucky’s lap and let Bucky card his fingers through Steve’s hair the same way he’d been doing it since 1926 and know that no matter how heavy the weight was, Bucky was with him.

 

-o-

  
  
  



End file.
